Paul Ditisheim

Paul Ditisheim was born in 1868 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the historic birthplace of watch-making industry.[1] Paul, son of the famous Ditisheim family, funder and owner of Vulcain, the watch manufacture enjoyed by American presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson,[2] was born into the small social circle of industrialist families that led the Swiss watch industry of the time.[3] He studied at the Horological School of La Chaux-de-Fonds and received his diploma at the age of 13. He was then trained in several of the major watch makers and worked at his family's Vulcain manufacture until 1892[4] when he founded his own brands: Solvil (whose items were often signed Paul Ditisheim) and Titus (whose items were generally marked separately).

Paul Ditisheim[5] was instrumental in developing the new generation of chronometers, improving them greatly through his studies on the impact of atmospheric pressure and magnetic fields. He invented the affix balance. Thanks to his inventions, he was able to make the most precise chronometers ever made. By 1903, his watches were awarded by the Kew and Neuchâtel Observatories contests. In 1912, he won the world’s chronometric record of the Royal Kew Observatory.[6] He also worked closely with Physics Nobel prize winner Charles-Edouard Guillaume and has been considered the father of the modern chronometers. According to Professor M. Andrade of the Besançon Astronomical Observatory, Ditisheim’s work “constitutes the most important progress of modern chronometry” [7]

In 1930, Paul Ditisheim handed over the Solvil et Titus and Paul Ditisheim brands to wealthy Swiss entrepreneur and captain of industry Paul Bernard Vogel. Vogel, heir to a prestigious family of industrialist and married to the heiress of the prominent Eberard family, was also a member of the Swiss watch industry’s elite. Vogel moved the company headquarters to Geneva and turned it into one of the largest and most successful brand of the time,[8] expanding it over the world. Ditisheim died in 1945, leaving a legacy of technical excellence and design that has renewed the reputation of Swiss Made.